Scientists get clues on climate change by looking back to Ireland’s Ice Age

Irish scientists are looking back hundreds of thousands of years to Ireland’s last ice age in order to better understand climate change.

Some wonder why more of Ireland isn’t like the Burren, raw rock that is the result of the scouring movement of the ice. Dr. Meehan explained that only 10 per cent of Ireland is rock outcrop, while “the rest is buried by deep glacial sediments.”

And buried it is, indeed. The present day Curragh in Co Kildare sits atop 110m of sediment, gravel and sand before reaching bedrock. Some of the deepest sedimentary deposits up to 125m thick overlay Offaly, Laois and south Kildare, he says. “There are trillions of tons of sediment.”